This is the Harris/Slone House
on North Franklin Street.
It is scheduled to be restored.

Mary Childers Slone left her entire estate
to the National Trust, including the house,
money and a wide variety of furniture.

I will add more information as I gather it.

This picture, provide by Craig Asbury, came
from a 1875 Adair County Atlas

From the Kirksville Daily Express July 4, 2004

Architect plans make-over
for Kirksville landmark

By Erica Mercer
A local landmark will be taking on a new look in the near future.

The 129-year-old house on the corner of North Franklin and Burton street is
now under the control of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which
is currently reviewing restoration plans for the property.

Susan Richards Johnson, an architect specializing in historic preservation
from Kansas City, Mo., and associated Julie Cawby visited Kirksville on
Thursday and Friday to begin making preparations for the project. The
National Trust hired the firm to renovate the house's exterior.

The property was deeded to the Trust, a nonprofit organization dedicated to
the preservation of historic property, after its last owner Mary Slone died
in April 2003.

The house was built in 1875 by Captain Thomas C. Harris. Harris, a New York
native and officer with the Union Army during the Civil War, is said to have
owned the historic woolen mills in Kirksville. He also served as a city
councilman in 1875 and later was appointed Justice of the Peace.

The house has changed hands numerous times since its construction. It was
bought by Dr. John Burton around 1890, only to be sold to Dr. A. Washington
Parrish around 1895. Victor and Bert Parrish, two of Parrish's sons, took
ownership of the property after his death.

Everella Murdock, a family friend of the Parrish's, began renting the first
floor of the house in 1939, only to acquire full ownership of the property
in 1951 when Bert Parrish died. After her death, Murdock left the property
to her daughter, Mary Childers Slone.

Slone moved to Nebraska in the 1980s to be with her son George. The house
has been empty ever since. George died in 2002, leaving Slone with no
relatives to care for the house.

Richard Douglas McClain, Slone's lawyer and friend in Lincoln, Neb., said
Slone treasured the house and talked of it often.

Michael Mulford, executor of Slone's estate, said she left her entire estate
to the National Trust, including the house, money and a wide variety of
furniture.

George Siekkinen, senior architect for the National Trust, came to visit the
property earlier this year. The National Trust opened up the restoration
project to area architects about three months ago, Richards Johnson said.

She said several people referred her firm to Siekkinen. She also said she
was excited to be working on the project.

This week's trip was devoted to field measure and to document the existing
conditions of the house. This process will help to create base drawings for
her team and record of the existing state of the house.

Next, a consultant from part of Richard Johnson's team, Historic
Preservation Services, will be doing historic reviews and research to
compile a document about the historic value of the house, the community and
events in Kirksville from around the time the house was built.

Richards Johnson said she will return in a few weeks with a more staff to
assess the house and draw up plans for the exterior restoration.

This first phase of the project will deal with wall movement, water
infiltration, grading around the existing building, window and roof repairs
and the removal of a northwest wing and garage that were added to the house
sometime within the last 50 years.

Richards Johnson said compared to other properties she has worked with, the
condition of the house is fair.

"It's at a point in its life where if something isn't done very quickly, it
will go to really poor [condition] in a very short amount of time," she
said.

Richards Johnson said the lack of heat in the building has led to the
deterioration of the home. Several sections of plaster have tumbled to the
floor from water leaks freezing and expanding. She said it was lucky there
was no indoor plumbing because bursting pipes can wreak a lot of havoc.

But the overall construction of the house and detail in it is very
interesting, she said. From being in the house, Richards Johnson said she
and Cawby believe the north wing of the house was built sometime during the
mid-1800s with the Italianate, more impressive section of the house being
added on.

A majority of the house's original structure remains intact, including some
of the glass, hardware, light fixtures and the large staircase and banister
inside the front door.

The monitor, the structure at the top of the roof which is mostly
ornamental, was removed in 1965 because it leaked. It was replaced shortly
thereafter and is in good condition, Richards Johnson said. It still leaks
but she said she thinks it has the original floor and windows.

Richards Johnson said bids for the project are scheduled to be opened
sometime in mid-September with the hopes to have construction completed
before winter.

Siekkinen said after this first phase of restoration is completed, the
National Trust will develop an easement to protect the property and then
sell it to a preservation-minded owner. The owner will then be responsible
for the remainder of the restoration while following guidelines imposed by
the easement.

Verlin Wilhite was appointed administrator of the property after Slone's
death. He said he has known her since 1955 and has been doing odds jobs for
her for many years. After she left Kirksville, Wilhite would assist Slone
when she had problems with the property.

Slone hired someone else to take care of the grounds, he said.

Wilhite said most of the restoration is unfolding the way Slone wanted it,
but he thinks she wanted the house to be more like a museum.

"It's one of the neater things to happen in Kirksville," he said.

From the Kirksville
Daily Express ... Saturday, May 28, 2005

This Old House: University volunteers excavate
historic Parrish House for National Trust renovation project

By MATTHEW WEBBER/Daily Express News
Reporter

KIRKSVILLE - After one morning of work, a
group of volunteer archaeologists had unearthed bone fragments, dog teeth
and a piece of a bottle.

But the professors and students digging
and sifting at one of the oldest houses in Kirksville on Friday were more
excited about the dirt.

More specifically, they were curious what
the dirt, concrete and other levels of earth could tell them about the
history of 1308 N. Franklin St., a 135-year-old house left empty for the
last 20 years.

"We're just kind of getting the sense of
what this space is and what the different textures of dirt are that we're
encountering," said Amber Johnson, an assistant professor of anthropology at
Truman State University, a few hours after beginning work.

"Most of what archaeologists do is not
very glamorous," Johnson admitted, as clouds of dust rose behind her.

"It's learning to pay attention to the
colors and textures of soil and paying attention to whether there are tiny
little pebbles or charcoal in it, which tells us about what activities might
have been like in the past."

From Friday until sometime later this
week, Johnson, her husband, Lewis Binford, and five university students are
excavating and mapping part of the lawn at the old Thomas Harris House, or
Parrish House, at the corner of Franklin and Burton streets, to try to
uncover those activities.

The information they gather will help the
National Trust for Historic Preservation determine how best to renovate the
house and return it as closely to possible to the way it looked when Capt.
Thomas C. Harris, a Union officer during the Civil War, had the house built
for his family around 1870, according to a document prepared by the National
Trust.

Until Thursday - two days ago - when a
two-man construction crew toppled the walls, the space in which these seven
volunteers are sweating and raising dust was the foundation for a family
room, which is believed to have been built as an addition sometime in the
1950s.

Before that, the space is believed to have
been a wooden porch, which the National Trust plans to re-create, said
Johnson, whose findings so far corroborate the existence of the porch.

However, due to the composition of soil at
the dig site and its proximity to a former well, Johnson believes the
house's former inhabitants used the space for other purposes throughout its
past.

"The hard-packed dirt places are telling
us that this was a space that wasn't just lawn and gardens, or not just the
loose dirt under a porch, but it was actually a place where people probably
kept it swept clean and may have done other activities outside the house,"
Johnson said.

"This would have been a major traffic zone
from the house to the well."

The usage of the family room/porch space
has changed almost as frequently as the house's ownership.

In 1895, a local doctor, Albert Washington
Parrish, bought the house, where he and his family lived for nearly 40
years.

Several other families have owned the
house, which has been sitting vacant and unoccupied since 1982 or 1983, when
its most recent owner, Mary Childers Slone, moved out, with only the
occasional vandal entering the property.

After Slone died in April 2004 and left
the house to the National Trust in her will, the organization's senior
architect contacted Johnson to inquire about architects in the area.

Johnson volunteered herself and her
students for the project, so the students, four of whom had never
participated in an archaeological dig before, could get hands-on experience
in their chosen field.

"I thought it would be a good excuse to
get a few of my students some experience doing archaeology and seeing how
archaeologists work and what they can learn from changes in the texture in
soil and little tiny scraps of things," Johnson said.

She and her students have been proceeding
with the work with caution, "just kind of starting from scratch," she said.

"We're piece-plotting, which means we're
getting the three-dimensional coordinates of anything we find in situ, left
in place," she said. "They're doing mapping of each three-meter-square grid
as we go.

"Then we'll have all of that information
so we can do a map, not only of the current surface, but, each time we go
down a layer, we'll have a new map."

Although movies often portray archaeology
as an exciting adventure, full of hidden treasure and other priceless
artifacts, the Kirksville volunteers are finding the reality of archaeology
is slower-paced but no less exciting.

"A lot of the allure of archaeology is the
big, fancy stuff and the cool artifacts. Everybody imagines digging for
treasure and finding really cool things," said Johnson, pointing out the
remains of concrete pilasters in the dirt.

"[But] we're getting excited about finding
little tiny scraps of burnt bones, because it's something where you can say
something about activity."

From the bones to the pilasters to the
dusty process of mapping, senior Ashley Young said he appreciates having the
chance to learn some of the history of the famous house and the tools of his
future profession.

"This is my first introduction to actual
field archaeology, so everything I'm doing here I'm learning is really
helpful," said Young, of Princeton, Mo.

Perhaps more importantly, the first-time
excavator has the opportunity to get his hands dirty for a fun - and
once-in-a-lifetime - summer project.

"It's very interesting," Young said.

"You don't want to go too fast because you
might overlook something.

"You don't want to come into the dig with
any presuppositions or presumptions as to what you're going to find and kind
of treat everything objectively as if everything you find is in some way
important.

"By nature, it's a destructive process. We
can't go back and do it over again. This is the only time it's ever going to
happen."

After the volunteers map the site and
collect artifacts, they will prepare a report for the National Trust that
will help the organization renovate the house.

After that, Johnson isn't sure what will
happen to the house, although she thinks the National Trust will try to sell
it to a preservation-minded buyer as a residence, bed and breakfast or
tourist attraction.

"We're hoping they'll be able to fix it up
some and have something fun happen at the house," Johnson said. "I'm looking
forward to seeing what happens."